The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a United States-based, non-profit international environmentaladvocacy group, with its headquarters in New York City and offices in Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; Los Angeles; New Delhi, India; Chicago; Bozeman, Montana; and Beijing, China.[1] Founded in 1970, the NRDC had 2.4 million members in 2015, with online activities nationwide, and a staff of about 500 lawyers, scientists and other policy experts.[3]

The charity monitoring group Charity Navigator gave the Natural Resources Defense Council four out of four stars in its three rating categories: overall, financial practices, and accountability & transparency.[4]

The NRDC was co-founded in 1970 by John Adams, Richard Ayres, John Bryson, Edward Strohbehn, and Gus Speth,[5] the organization states that it seeks sustainable policies from federal, state and local government and industrial corporations. It seeks to influence federal and state environmental and other agencies, the Congress and state legislatures, and the courts to reduce global warming, limit pollution, and generally conserve energy and increase sustainability of commerce and manufacturing. NRDC participates in litigation in federal and state courts of the United States to influence implementation and enforcement of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and other federal and state laws protecting the environment, the Council also supports an environmental science program that involves NRDC staff and associated scientists, including a program seeking transformation of manufacturing industries to more sustainable production. In addition, the organization states that it educates the public.

In 2001, NRDC launched the BioGems Initiative to mobilize concerned individuals in defense of exceptional and imperiled ecosystems, the initiative matches NRDC's legal and institutional assets with the work of citizen activists.

Contents

The Climate and Clean Air Program focuses on clean air, global warming, transportation, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and electric-industry restructuring. This includes the Renewable Energy and Defense Database project with the Pentagon.[10]

Save the Bees Initiative appealing to the President to take urgent action necessary to save the bee populations from further decline by banning bee-toxic neonics.

The Health Program works on issues involving drinking water, chemical harm to the environment, and other environmental health threats with the goal of reducing the amount of toxins released into the environment.

The Urban Program focuses on environmental issues in urban centers and surrounding areas. Issues include air and water quality, garbage and recycling, transportation, sprawl, and environmental justice.

OnEarth magazine is a quarterly publication of the NRDC dealing with environmental challenges. The magazine was founded in 1979 as The Amicus Journal,[13] as Amicus, the magazine won the George Polk Award in 1983 for special interest reporting.[14] OnEarth magazine can be accessed online at http://www.onearth.org.

Proponents of the bill disagree with NRDC's stance on the bill, arguing that the current Federal policy defended by NRDC seeks to make users of public lands turn over water rights which in many cases they have paid state or local governments for. Operators of ski areas, ranchers, and farmers, and other users of public land say that the Federal policy defended by NRDC denies them rights to use water for which they have already paid, effectively denying them use of the land, the Water Rights Protection Act is supported by national ski area groups, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Association of Conservation Districts, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the Family Farm Alliance, the National Water Resources Association, the Colorado River Conservation District, the Colorado Association of Conservation Districts, and other interests threatened by existing Federal water policy in the West which the NRDC is defending.[20]

1.
John Bryson
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John E. Bryson is the former United States Secretary of Commerce, the 37th person to hold the post since its establishment in 1913. Prior to this, he served as the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Edison International, the Senate confirmed Bryson as Secretary of Commerce by a 74–26 vote on October 20,2011. He was sworn in on October 21,2011, Bryson took a leave of absence in June 2012 for medical tests due to seizures that were related to a hit and run. Bryson was born in New York City and he graduated from Cleveland High School in Portland, Oregon, in 1961. He received his bachelors degree from Stanford University in 1965 and his Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School in 1969, in 1970, with other recent Yale Law graduates, Bryson helped found and served as legal counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council. From 1976 to 1979, Bryson served as chairman of the California State Water Resources Control Board, in 1983 Bryson worked for the law firm of Morrison and Foerster in the San Francisco office. Bryson joined Edison International in 1984, and served as director from 1990 until his retirement on July 31,2008. Bryson was a director of The Boeing Company, W. M. Keck Foundation, and The Walt Disney Company, on May 31,2011, President Barack Obama nominated Bryson to succeed Gary Locke as the United States Secretary of Commerce. Citing Brysons environmental views, United States Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, the Senate later reached a unanimous consent agreement to vote on Brysons nomination, and the Senate confirmed Bryson by a 74–26 vote on October 20,2011. He was sworn in on October 21,2011, becoming the 37th Secretary of the Department of Commerce, as Secretary of Commerce, Bryson co-chaired the White House Office of Manufacturing Policy with Gene Sperling. On June 9,2012, Bryson was involved in a pair of car crashes in San Gabriel, California and Rosemead, California and he is said to have been found unconscious at the site of the second crash. A Department of Commerce spokesperson confirmed he was involved in a crash, los Angeles County prosecutors announced on July 3,2012, that no criminal charges would be pursued. On June 11, Bryson announced in a memo that he was taking a leave of absence. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank began serving as Acting Secretary of Commerce, on June 21,2012, Bryson announced his resignation from the post of Secretary of Commerce. Bryson joined the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars as a Distinguished Senior Public Policy Scholar in October 2012 and their four daughters graduated from the Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California. Bryson and his wife served on the schools Board of Trustees. Bryson and his wife reside in San Marino, California

2.
James Gustave Speth
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James Gustave Speth is an American environmental lawyer and advocate. He was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina in 1942 and he graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1964, attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and graduated from Yale Law School, where he was a member of the Yale Law Journal, in 1969. He served in 1969 and 1970 as a law clerk to U. S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black, Speth was a co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, where he served as senior attorney from 1970 to 1977. He served from 1977 to 1981, as a Member and then for two years as Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President, in 1981 and 1982 he was Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, teaching environmental and constitutional law. In 1982, he founded the World Resources Institute, a Washington, D. C. -based environmental think tank, served as its president until January 1993. He was an adviser to President-elect Bill Clintons transition team, heading the group that examined the U. S. s role in natural resources, energy. In 1991, he chaired a U. S. task force on international development and environmental security which produced the report Partnership for Sustainable Development, in 1990 he led the Western Hemisphere Dialogue on Environment and Development which produced the report Compact for a New World. In 1999, he became the dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, New Haven, Speth was succeeded as Dean at Yale by Sir Peter Crane. In 2014 he published his memoir Angels by the River, in that year he was also board member of the New Economy Coalition. Speth currently serves on the Advisory Council of Represent. Us and he holds honorary degrees from Clark University, the College of the Atlantic, Vermont Law School, and Middlebury College

3.
Environmentalism
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While environmentalism focuses more on the environmental and nature-related aspects of green ideology and politics, ecologism combines the ideology of social ecology and environmentalism. ‘Ecologism’ is more used in continental European languages while ‘environmentalism’ is more commonly used in English. For this reason, concepts such as an ethic, environmental ethics, biodiversity, ecology. The exact measures and outcomes of this balance is controversial and there are different ways for environmental concerns to be expressed in practice. Environmentalism and environmental concerns are represented by the color green. Environmentalism denotes a movement that seeks to influence the political process by lobbying, activism. The word was first coined in 1922, an environmentalist is a person who may speak out about our natural environment and the sustainable management of its resources through changes in public policy or individual behavior. In various ways, environmentalists and environmental organizations seek to give the world a stronger voice in human affairs. In general terms, environmentalists advocate the sustainable management of resources, in its recognition of humanity as a participant in ecosystems, the movement is centered around ecology, health, and human rights. A concern for environmental protection has recurred in diverse forms, in different parts of the world, for example, in Europe, King Edward I of England banned the burning of sea-coal by proclamation in London in 1272, after its smoke had become a problem. The fuel was so common in England that this earliest of names for it was acquired because it could be carted away from some shores by the wheelbarrow. Earlier in the Middle East, the Caliph Abu Bakr in the 630s commanded his army to Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, at the advent of steam and electricity the muse of history holds her nose and shuts her eyes. The origins of the movement lay in the response to increasing levels of smoke pollution in the atmosphere during the Industrial Revolution. An Alkali inspector and four sub-inspectors were appointed to curb this pollution, typically the highest priority went to water and air pollution. The Coal Smoke Abatement Society was formed in 1898 making it one of the oldest environmental NGOs and it was founded by artist Sir William Blake Richmond, frustrated with the pall cast by coal smoke. Although there were pieces of legislation, the Public Health Act 1875 required all furnaces and fireplaces to consume their own smoke. It also provided for sanctions against factories that emitted large amounts of black smoke, financial incentives were offered to householders to replace open coal fires with alternatives, or for those who preferred, to burn coke instead which produces minimal smoke. Smoke control areas were introduced in some towns and cities in which only smokeless fuels could be burnt, the act formed an important impetus to modern environmentalism, and caused a rethinking of the dangers of environmental degradation to peoples quality of life

4.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange

5.
New York (state)
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New York is a state in the northeastern United States, and is the 27th-most extensive, fourth-most populous, and seventh-most densely populated U. S. state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east. With an estimated population of 8.55 million in 2015, New York City is the most populous city in the United States, the New York Metropolitan Area is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. New York City makes up over 40% of the population of New York State, two-thirds of the states population lives in the New York City Metropolitan Area, and nearly 40% lives on Long Island. Both the state and New York City were named for the 17th-century Duke of York, the next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany. New York has a diverse geography and these more mountainous regions are bisected by two major river valleys—the north-south Hudson River Valley and the east-west Mohawk River Valley, which forms the core of the Erie Canal. Western New York is considered part of the Great Lakes Region and straddles Lake Ontario, between the two lakes lies Niagara Falls. The central part of the state is dominated by the Finger Lakes, New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans came to New York. The first Europeans to arrive were French colonists and Jesuit missionaries who arrived southward from settlements at Montreal for trade, the British annexed the colony from the Dutch in 1664. The borders of the British colony, the Province of New York, were similar to those of the present-day state, New York is home to the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the United States and its ideals of freedom, democracy, and opportunity. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. On April 17,1524 Verrazanno entered New York Bay, by way of the now called the Narrows into the northern bay which he named Santa Margherita. Verrazzano described it as a vast coastline with a delta in which every kind of ship could pass and he adds. This vast sheet of water swarmed with native boats and he landed on the tip of Manhattan and possibly on the furthest point of Long Island. Verrazannos stay was interrupted by a storm which pushed him north towards Marthas Vineyard, in 1540 French traders from New France built a chateau on Castle Island, within present-day Albany, due to flooding, it was abandoned the next year. In 1614, the Dutch under the command of Hendrick Corstiaensen, rebuilt the French chateau, Fort Nassau was the first Dutch settlement in North America, and was located along the Hudson River, also within present-day Albany. The small fort served as a trading post and warehouse, located on the Hudson River flood plain, the rudimentary fort was washed away by flooding in 1617, and abandoned for good after Fort Orange was built nearby in 1623. Henry Hudsons 1609 voyage marked the beginning of European involvement with the area, sailing for the Dutch East India Company and looking for a passage to Asia, he entered the Upper New York Bay on September 11 of that year

6.
United States dollar
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The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its insular territories per the United States Constitution. It is divided into 100 smaller cent units, the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. The U. S. dollar was originally commodity money of silver as enacted by the Coinage Act of 1792 which determined the dollar to be 371 4/16 grain pure or 416 grain standard silver, the currency most used in international transactions, it is the worlds primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their currency, and in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while the country mints its own coins, or also accepts U. S. coins that can be used as payment in U. S. dollars. After Nixon shock of 1971, USD became fiat currency, Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power To coin money, laws implementing this power are currently codified at 31 U. S. C. Section 5112 prescribes the forms in which the United States dollars should be issued and these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as legal tender in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar, the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 also provides for the minting and issuance of other coins and these other coins are more fully described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the Statements are currently being expressed in U. S. dollars, the U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States. The word dollar is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution, there, dollars is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act, Section 20 of the act provided, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units. And that all accounts in the offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States, unlike the Spanish milled dollar the U. S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the form is significantly more common

7.
Nonprofit organization
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A nonprofit organization is an organization whose purpose is something other than making a profit. A nonprofit organization is dedicated to furthering a particular social cause or advocating for a particular point of view. This is known as the non-distribution constraint, the decision to adopt a nonprofit legal structure is one that will often have taxation implications, particularly where the nonprofit seeks income tax exemption, charitable status and so on. The terms nonprofit and not-for-profit are not consistently differentiated across jurisdictions, in laymans terms they are usually equivalent in concept, although in various jurisdictions there are accounting and legal differences. The nonprofit landscape is varied, although many people have come to associate NPOs with charitable organizations. Although charities do make up an often high-profile or visible aspect of the sector, overall, they tend to be either member-serving or community-serving. e. It could be argued many nonprofits sit across both camps, at least in terms of the impact they make. For example, the support group that provides a lifeline to those with a particular condition or disease could be deemed to be serving its members. Many NPOs use the model of a bottom line in that furthering their cause is more important than making a profit. Although NPOs are permitted to generate revenues, they must be retained by the organization for its self-preservation, expansion. NPOs have controlling members or a board of directors, many have paid staff including management, whereas others employ unpaid volunteers and executives who work with or without compensation. In some countries, where there is a fee, in general. The extent to which an NPO can generate surplus revenues may be constrained or use of surplus revenues may be restricted. Some NPOs may also be a charity or service organization, they may be organized as a corporation or as a trust. Their goal is not to be successful in terms of wealth, NPOs have a wide diversity of structures and purposes. Some of the above must be expressed in the charter of establishment or constitution. Others may be provided by the authority at each particular jurisdiction. While affiliations will not affect a legal status, they may be taken into consideration by legal proceedings as an indication of purpose, most countries have laws that regulate the establishment and management of NPOs and that require compliance with corporate governance regimes

8.
Advocacy group
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Advocacy groups use various forms of advocacy in order to influence public opinion and/or policy. They have played and continue to play an important part in the development of political and social systems. Groups vary considerably in size, influence, and motive, some have wide-ranging long term social purposes, motives for action may be based on a shared political, religious, moral, health or commercial position. Groups use varied methods to try to achieve their aims including lobbying, media campaigns, publicity stunts, polls, research, and policy briefings. Some groups are supported or backed by business or political interests and exert considerable influence on the political process. Some have developed into important social, political institutions or social movements, Some groups, generally ones with less financial resources, may use direct action and civil disobedience and in some cases are accused of being a threat to the social order or domestic extremists. Research is beginning to explore how advocacy groups use media to facilitate civic engagement. An advocacy group is a group or an organization tries to influence the government. The first mass social movement catalyzed around the political figure. Charged with seditious libel, Wilkes was arrested after the issue of a general warrant, as a result of this episode, Wilkes became a figurehead to the growing movement for popular sovereignty among the middle classes – people began chanting, Wilkes and Liberty in the streets. After a later period of exile, brought about by further charges of libel and obscenity, Wilkes stood for the Parliamentary seat at Middlesex, where most of his support was located. When Wilkes was imprisoned in the Kings Bench Prison on 10 May 1768 and this was the first ever sustained social advocacy group, —it involved public meetings, demonstrations, the distribution of pamphlets on an unprecedented scale and the mass petition march. The force and influence of this social movement on the streets of London compelled the authorities to concede to the movements demands. Wilkes was returned to Parliament, general warrants were declared as unconstitutional, another important advocacy group that emerged in the late 18th century was the British abolitionist movement against slavery. Starting with an organised sugar boycott in 1791, it led the great petition drive of 1806. In the opinion of Eugene Black. association made possible the extension of the politically effective public, modern extra parliamentary political organization is a product of the late eighteenth century the history of the age of reform cannot be written without it. From 1815, Britain after victory in the Napoleonic Wars entered a period of social upheaval characterised by the maturity of the use of social movements. Chartism was the first mass movement of the growing working-class in the world and they led, among other things, to the formation of green parties and organisations influenced by the new left

9.
Charity Navigator
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Charity Navigator is an American independent charity watchdog organization that evaluates charitable organizations in the United States. Charity Navigator was launched in spring 2001 by John P. Dugan, the groups mission was to help. donors make informed giving decisions and enabling well-run charities to demonstrate their commitment to proper stewardship of donor dollars. Initially, Charity Navigator provided financial ratings for 1,100 charities, the site also features opinion pieces by Charity Navigator experts, donation tips, and top-10 and bottom-10 lists that rank efficient and inefficient organizations in a number of categories. Annually, Charity Navigator conducts a study to determine and analyze any statistical differences that exist in the financial practices of charities in metropolitan markets across America. The service is free, and the site is navigable by charity name, Charity Navigator is a 501 organization that accepts no advertising or donations from the organizations it evaluates. In 2006 Time magazine named it in one of the 50 top websites of the year, in a September 15,2014 Chronicle of Philanthropy interview on the non-profit sector, Nicholas Kristof identified Charity Navigator with a trend he deplored. There is too much emphasis on inputs and not enough on impact and this has been worsened by an effort to create more accountability through sites like Charity Navigator. There is so much emphasis now on expense ratios that there is an underinvestment in administration, in a 2014 survey of attitudes toward charity evaluation seals shaping donor decisions about a charity, Charity Navigators was rated six of seven on a list of those presented in the survey. Based on how the charity rates in each of the two areas, it is assigned a rating, ranging from zero to four stars. This method was criticized in an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review for taking into account only a single years IRS Form 990 and this can lead to significant fluctuation in the ranking of a charity from year to year. Also, the focus on the IRS Form 990 has itself been criticized, as the accuracy, Form 990 categorizes a charitys expenditures into three broad categories that are open to accounting manipulation. However, Charity Navigator never included charities that claim to have no fundraising expenditures and this was described in further detail in a podcast for The Chronicle of Philanthropy in September 2009. The article explained that plans for a rating system will also include measures of accountability as well as outcomes. In July 2010, Charity Navigator announced the first major revamp and this revamping begins what the organization states is the process to move toward CN3. In January 2013, Charity Navigator announced another expansion to its methodology, Results Reporting. Because mission-related results are the reason that charities exist, Charity Navigator developed this new rating dimension to specifically examine how well charities report on their results. Charity Navigators website explains the new methodology and its plans for the future, in recent years, Charity Navigator has become outspoken against what it calls high CEO compensation. At the same time, they note that nonprofit CEOs should be paid what the market demands and they complete a CEO compensation study each year

10.
Sustainability
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In ecology, sustainability is the property of biological systems to remain diverse and productive indefinitely. Long-lived and healthy wetlands and forests are examples of biological systems. In more general terms, sustainability is the endurance of systems, the organizing principle for sustainability is sustainable development, which includes the four interconnected domains, ecology, economics, politics and culture. Sustainability science is the study of development and environmental science. Sustainability can also be defined as a process characterized by the pursuit of a common ideal. An ideal is by definition unattainable in a time and space. However, by persistently and dynamically approaching it, the results in a sustainable system. Healthy ecosystems and environments are necessary to the survival of humans, ways of reducing negative human impact are environmentally-friendly chemical engineering, environmental resources management and environmental protection. Information is gained from green chemistry, earth science, environmental science, Ecological economics studies the fields of academic research that aim to address human economies and natural ecosystems. Moving towards sustainability is also a challenge that entails international and national law, urban planning and transport, local and individual lifestyles. The name sustainability is derived from the Latin sustinere, sustain can mean “maintain, support, or endure”. ”The 2005 World Summit on Social Development identified sustainable development goals, such as economic development, social development and environmental protection. This view has been expressed as an illustration using three overlapping ellipses indicating that the three pillars of sustainability are not mutually exclusive and can be mutually reinforcing, in fact, the three pillars are interdependent, and in the long run none can exist without the others. The three pillars have served as a ground for numerous sustainability standards and certification systems in recent years. Standards which today explicitly refer to the bottom line include Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade. Some sustainability experts and practitioners have illustrated four pillars of sustainability, one such pillar is future generations, which emphasizes the long-term thinking associated with sustainability. There is also an opinion that considers resource use and financial sustainability as two pillars of sustainability. Sustainable development consists of balancing local and global efforts to meet human needs without destroying or degrading the natural environment. The question then becomes how to represent the relationship between those needs and the environment, a study from 2005 pointed out that environmental justice is as important as sustainable development

11.
Clean Air Act (United States)
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The Clean Air Act is a United States federal law designed to control air pollution on a national level. It is one of the United States first and most influential environmental laws. As with many other major U. S. federal environmental statutes, it is administered by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, in coordination with state, local and its implementing regulations are codified at 40 C. F. R. The 1955 Air Pollution Control Act was the first U. S federal legislation that pertained to air pollution, the first federal legislation to actually pertain to controlling air pollution was the Clean Air Act of 1963. The 1963 act accomplished this by establishing a program within the U. S. Public Health Service and authorizing research into techniques for monitoring and controlling air pollution, the 1967 act also authorized expanded studies of air pollutant emission inventories, ambient monitoring techniques, and control techniques. Major amendments to the law, requiring regulatory controls for air pollution, the 1970 amendments greatly expanded the federal mandate, requiring comprehensive federal and state regulations for both stationary pollution sources and mobile sources. It also significantly expanded federal enforcement, the 1990 amendments addressed acid rain, ozone depletion, and toxic air pollution, established a national permits program for stationary sources, and increased enforcement authority. Reviewing his tenure as EPA Administrator under President George H. Bush, the Clean Air Act was the first major environmental law in the United States to include a provision for citizen suits. Numerous state and local governments have enacted legislation, either implementing federal programs or filling in locally important gaps in federal programs. This section of the act declares that protecting and enhancing the nations air quality promotes public health, the law encourages prevention of regional air pollution and control programs. It also provides technical and financial assistance for air pollution prevention at both state and local governments, additional subchapters cover of cooperation, research, investigation, training and other activities. Grants for air pollution planning and control programs, and interstate air quality agencies, the act mandates air quality control regions, designated as attainment vs non-attainment. Non-attainment areas do not meet standards for primary or secondary ambient air quality. Attainment areas meet these standards, while unclassifiable areas cannot be classified on the basis of the information that is available, Air quality criteria, national primary and secondary ambient air quality standards, state implementation plans and performance standards for new stationary sources are also covered in Part A. The list of air pollutants established by the act includes acetaldehyde, benzene, chloroform, phenols. The list also includes mineral fiber emissions from manufacturing or processing glass, the list periodically can be modified. The remaining subchapters cover smokestack heights, state plan adequacy, and estimating emissions of carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, measures to prevent unemployment or other economic disruption include using local coal or coal derivatives to comply with implementation requirements

12.
Clean Water Act
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The Clean Water Act is the primary federal law in the United States governing water pollution. It is one of the United States first and most influential environmental laws. As with many other major U. S. federal environmental statutes, it is administered by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency and its implementing regulations are codified at 40 C. F. R. Subchapters D, N, and O. Technically, the name of the law is the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. The first FWPCA was enacted in 1948, but took on its form when completely rewritten in 1972 in an act entitled the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. Major changes have subsequently been introduced via amendatory legislation including the Clean Water Act of 1977, the Clean Water Act does not directly address groundwater contamination. Groundwater protection provisions are included in the Safe Drinking Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, all waters with a significant nexus to navigable waters are covered under the CWA, however, the phrase significant nexus remains open to judicial interpretation and considerable controversy. The 1972 statute frequently uses the term navigable waters, but also defines the term as waters of the United States, including the territorial seas. Some regulations interpreting the 1972 law have included features such as intermittent streams, playa lakes, prairie potholes, sloughs. The 1972 act introduced the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, which is a system for regulating point sources of pollution. Municipal governments and other government facilities, and some agricultural facilities, point sources may not discharge pollutants to surface waters without a permit from the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. This system is managed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in partnership with state environmental agencies, EPA has authorized 46 states to issue permits directly to the discharging facilities. The CWA also allows tribes to issue permits, but no tribes have been authorized by EPA, in the remaining states and territories, the permits are issued by an EPA regional office. In previous legislation, Congress had authorized states to develop quality standards. However, these standards were only to be developed for interstate waters, and this system was not effective and there was no permit system in place to enforce the requirements. In the 1972 CWA Congress added the permit system and a requirement for technology-based effluent limitations, the 1972 CWA created a new requirement for technology-based standards for point source discharges. EPA develops these standards for categories of dischargers, based on the performance of pollution control technologies without regard to the conditions of a receiving water body. The intent of Congress was to create a playing field by establishing a basic national discharge standard for all facilities within a category

13.
Ecosystem
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An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment, interacting as a system. These biotic and abiotic components are regarded as linked together through nutrient cycles, as ecosystems are defined by the network of interactions among organisms, and between organisms and their environment, they can be of any size but usually encompass specific, limited spaces. Energy, water, nitrogen and soil minerals are other essential components of an ecosystem. The energy that flows through ecosystems is obtained primarily from the sun and it generally enters the system through photosynthesis, a process that also captures carbon from the atmosphere. By feeding on plants and on one another, animals play an important role in the movement of matter and they also influence the quantity of plant and microbial biomass present. Ecosystems are controlled both by external and internal factors, other external factors include time and potential biota. Ecosystems are dynamic entities—invariably, they are subject to disturbances and are in the process of recovering from some past disturbance. Ecosystems in similar environments that are located in different parts of the world can have different characteristics simply because they contain different species. The introduction of species can cause substantial shifts in ecosystem function. Internal factors not only control ecosystem processes but are controlled by them and are often subject to feedback loops. Other internal factors include disturbance, succession and the types of species present, although humans exist and operate within ecosystems, their cumulative effects are large enough to influence external factors like climate. Biodiversity affects ecosystem function, as do the processes of disturbance, classifying ecosystems into ecologically homogeneous units is an important step towards effective ecosystem management, but there is no single, agreed-upon way to do this. The term ecosystem was first used in 1935 in a publication by British ecologist Arthur Tansley, Tansley devised the concept to draw attention to the importance of transfers of materials between organisms and their environment. He later refined the term, describing it as The whole system, including not only the organism-complex, but also the whole complex of physical factors forming what we call the environment. Tansley regarded ecosystems not simply as natural units, but as mental isolates, Tansley later defined the spatial extent of ecosystems using the term ecotope. G. Raymond Lindeman took these ideas one step further to suggest that the flow of energy through a lake was the driver of the ecosystem. Most mineral nutrients, on the hand, are recycled within ecosystems. Ecosystems are controlled both by external and internal factors, external factors, also called state factors, control the overall structure of an ecosystem and the way things work within it, but are not themselves influenced by the ecosystem

14.
New Orleans
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New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The population of the city was 343,829 as of the 2010 U. S. Census, the New Orleans metropolitan area had a population of 1,167,764 in 2010 and was the 46th largest in the United States. The New Orleans–Metairie–Bogalusa Combined Statistical Area, a trading area, had a 2010 population of 1,452,502. The city is named after the Duke of Orleans, who reigned as Regent for Louis XV from 1715 to 1723, as it was established by French colonists and it is well known for its distinct French and Spanish Creole architecture, as well as its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. New Orleans is also famous for its cuisine, music, and its celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras. The city is referred to as the most unique in the United States. New Orleans is located in southeastern Louisiana, straddling the Mississippi River, the city and Orleans Parish are coterminous. The city and parish are bounded by the parishes of St. Tammany to the north, St. Bernard to the east, Plaquemines to the south, and Jefferson to the south and west. Lake Pontchartrain, part of which is included in the city limits, lies to the north, before Hurricane Katrina, Orleans Parish was the most populous parish in Louisiana. As of 2015, it ranks third in population, trailing neighboring Jefferson Parish, La Nouvelle-Orléans was founded May 7,1718, by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha. It was named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who was Regent of the Kingdom of France at the time and his title came from the French city of Orléans. The French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris, during the American Revolutionary War, New Orleans was an important port for smuggling aid to the rebels, transporting military equipment and supplies up the Mississippi River. Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez successfully launched a campaign against the British from the city in 1779. New Orleans remained under Spanish control until 1803, when it reverted briefly to French oversight, nearly all of the surviving 18th-century architecture of the Vieux Carré dates from the Spanish period, the most notable exception being the Old Ursuline Convent. Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, thereafter, the city grew rapidly with influxes of Americans, French, Creoles, and Africans. Later immigrants were Irish, Germans, and Italians, Major commodity crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated with slave labor on large plantations outside the city. The Haitian Revolution ended in 1804 and established the republic in the Western Hemisphere. It had occurred several years in what was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue

15.
Hurricane Katrina
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Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. The storm is ranked as the third most intense United States landfalling tropical cyclone. Overall, at least 1,245 people died in the hurricane and subsequent floods, total property damage was estimated at $108 billion, roughly four times the damage wrought by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 in the United States. Early the following day, the new depression intensified into Tropical Storm Katrina, the cyclone headed generally westward toward Florida and strengthened into a hurricane only two hours before making landfall at Hallandale Beach and Aventura on August 25. After very briefly weakening to a storm, Katrina emerged into the Gulf of Mexico on August 26. The storm caused severe destruction along the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas, much of it due to the storm surge, severe property damage occurred in coastal areas, such as Mississippi beachfront towns, over 90 percent of these were flooded. Boats and casino barges rammed buildings, pushing cars and houses inland, over fifty breaches in New Orleanss hurricane surge protection were the cause of the majority of the death and destruction during Katrina on August 29,2005. Eventually 80% of the city and large tracts of neighboring parishes became flooded, according to a modeling exercise conducted by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, two-thirds of the deaths in Greater New Orleans were due to levee and floodwall failure. All of the studies concluded that the USACE, the designers and builders of the levee system as mandated by the Flood Control Act of 1965, is responsible. This is mainly due to a decision to use shorter steel sheet pilings in an effort to save money, exactly ten years after Katrina, J. Many other government officials were criticized for their responses, especially New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, several agencies including the United States Coast Guard, National Hurricane Center, and National Weather Service were commended for their actions. They provided accurate hurricane weather tracking forecasts with sufficient lead time, Hurricane Katrina formed as Tropical Depression Twelve over the southeastern Bahamas on August 23,2005, as the result of an interaction of a tropical wave and the remains of Tropical Depression Ten. It strengthened into Tropical Storm Katrina on the morning of August 24, the tropical storm moved towards Florida, and became a hurricane only two hours before making landfall between Hallandale Beach and Aventura on the morning of August 25. The storm weakened over land, but it regained hurricane status about one hour after entering the Gulf of Mexico, on August 27, the storm reached Category 3 intensity on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale, becoming the third major hurricane of the season. An eyewall replacement cycle disrupted the intensification, but caused the storm to nearly double in size, the storm rapidly intensified after entering the Gulf, growing from a Category 3 hurricane to a Category 5 hurricane in just nine hours. This rapid growth was due to the movement over the unusually warm waters of the Loop Current. Katrina attained Category 5 status on the morning of August 28 and reached its peak strength at 1800 UTC that day, with sustained winds of 175 mph. However, this record was broken by Hurricane Rita

16.
Nuclear weapon
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A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from small amounts of matter. The first test of a bomb released the same amount of energy as approximately 20,000 tons of TNT. The first thermonuclear bomb test released the same amount of energy as approximately 10 million tons of TNT, a thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than 2,400 pounds can produce an explosive force comparable to the detonation of more than 1.2 million tons of TNT. A nuclear device no larger than traditional bombs can devastate a city by blast, fire. Nuclear weapons are considered weapons of destruction, and their use. Nuclear weapons have been used twice in nuclear warfare, both times by the United States against Japan near the end of World War II, the bombings resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 civilians and military personnel from acute injuries sustained from the explosions. The ethics of the bombings and their role in Japans surrender remain the subject of scholarly, since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have been detonated on over two thousand occasions for the purposes of testing and demonstration. Only a few nations possess such weapons or are suspected of seeking them, israel is also believed to possess nuclear weapons, though in a policy of deliberate ambiguity, it does not acknowledge having them. Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands are nuclear weapons sharing states, south Africa is the only country to have independently developed and then renounced and dismantled its nuclear weapons. Modernisation of weapons continues to occur, all existing nuclear weapons derive some of their explosive energy from nuclear fission reactions. Weapons whose explosive output is exclusively from fission reactions are commonly referred to as bombs or atom bombs. This has long noted as something of a misnomer, as their energy comes from the nucleus of the atom. The latter approach is considered more sophisticated than the former and only the approach can be used if the fissile material is plutonium. A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is to ensure that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before the weapon destroys itself. The amount of energy released by fission bombs can range from the equivalent of just under a ton to upwards of 500,000 tons of TNT, all fission reactions necessarily generate fission products, the radioactive remains of the atomic nuclei split by the fission reactions. Many fission products are highly radioactive or moderately radioactive. Fission products are the radioactive component of nuclear fallout

17.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
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One of the driving forces behind the creation of the Bulletin was the amount of public interest surrounding atomic energy at the dawn of the Atomic Age. To convey the particular peril posed by nuclear weapons, the Bulletin devised the Doomsday Clock in 1947, using the imagery of apocalypse and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion, the Clock conveys man-made existential threats to humanity and the planet. The minute hand of the Clock first moved closer to midnight in response to changing events in 1949. The Clock has been set forward and back over the years as circumstances have changed, the Doomsday Clock is recognized as a universal symbol of threats to humanity from a variety of sources, nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, climate change, and emerging technologies. The founder and first editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was biophysicist Eugene Rabinowitch and he founded the magazine with physicist Hyman Goldsmith. Rabinowitch was a professor of botany and biophysics at the University of Illinois and was also a member of the Continuing Committee for the Pugwash Conferences on Science. In addition to Rabinowitch and Goldsmith, contributors have included, Morton Grodzins, Hans Bethe, Anatoli Blagonravov, Max Born, Harrison Brown, Stuart Chase, Brock Chisholm, urey, Paul Weiss, James L. Tuck, among many others. In 1949, the Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science incorporated as a not-for-profit 501 organization to serve as the parent organization, in 2003, the Board of Directors voted to change the foundations name to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists began as an emergency action undertaken by scientists who saw urgent need for an educational program about atomic weapons. One of the purposes of the Bulletin was to fellow scientists about the relationship between their world of science and the world of national and international politics. A second was to help the American people understand what nuclear energy, the Bulletin contributors believed the atom bomb would only be the first of many dangerous presents from Pandoras box of modern science. The aim of the Bulletin was to out the long. The Bulletin also serves as a reliable, high-quality global forum for diverse international opinions on the best means of reducing reliance on nuclear weapons, throughout the history of the Bulletin there have been many different focuses of the contributors to the Bulletin. In the early years of the Bulletin it was separated into three distinct stages and these stages, as defined by founder Eugene Rabinowitch in The Atomic Age were Failure, Peril, and Fear. The Failure stage surrounded the Bulletins frustrated attempts to convince the American people that the best and most effective way to them was to eliminate their use. In the Peril stage, the focused on warning readers about the dangers of full-scale atomic war. In the Fear stage, the Bulletin took interest in matters like foreign espionage and political loyalty, even before the Bulletin was established in December 1945, there was an effort by the scientists working inside the United States to prevent atomic warfare from ever taking place. These fears and uncertainties about the effects of warfare existed long before the United States dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima

18.
Green Day
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Green Day is an American punk rock band formed in 1986 by lead vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong and bassist Mike Dirnt. For much of the career, the band has been a trio with drummer Tré Cool. Guitarist Jason White, who has worked with the band as a member since 1999, was an official member from 2012 to 2016. Green Day was originally part of the scene at the DIY924 Gilman Street club in Berkeley. The bands early releases were with the independent record label Lookout, in 1994, its major label debut Dookie became a breakout success and eventually shipped over 10 million copies in the U. S. The bands rock opera, American Idiot, reignited the bands popularity with a younger generation, the bands eighth studio album, 21st Century Breakdown, was released in 2009 and achieved the bands best chart performance to date. 21st Century Breakdown was followed up by a trilogy of albums called ¡Uno, ¡Dos. and ¡Tré. which were released in September, November and December 2012 respectively. The bands twelfth album, Revolution Radio was released on October 7,2016 and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. Green Day has sold more than 85 million records worldwide, in 2010, a stage adaptation of American Idiot debuted on Broadway. The musical was nominated for three Tony Awards, Best Musical, Best Scenic Design and Best Lighting Design, losing only the first, also in 2010, Green Day was ranked no.91 in the VH1 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. On April 18,2015, the band was inducted into the Rock, in 1986, friends Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt,14 years old at the time, formed a band called Sweet Children. The groups first live performance took place on October 17,1987, at Rods Hickory Pit in Vallejo, in 1988, Armstrong and Dirnt began working with former Isocracy drummer John Kiffmeyer, also known as Al Sobrante. As said in the film Punks Not Dead, Armstrong cites the band Operation Ivy as an influence. In 1988, Larry Livermore, owner of Lookout, Records, saw the band play an early show and signed the group to his label. In 1989, the band recorded its debut extended play,1,000 Hours, before 1,000 Hours was released, the group dropped the name Sweet Children, according to Livermore, this was done to avoid confusion with another local band Sweet Baby. The band adopted the name Green Day, due to the fondness for cannabis. Released Green Days debut studio album, 39/Smooth in early 1990, Records re-released 39/Smooth under the name 1, 039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours, and added the songs from the bands first two EPs, Slappy, and 1,000 Hours. In late 1990, shortly after the bands first nationwide tour, Kiffmeyer left the East Bay area to attend Humboldt State University in Arcata, California

19.
United States energy independence
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U. S. energy independence relates to the goal of reducing the United States imports of petroleum and other foreign sources of energy. Energy independence is espoused by those who want to leave the U. S. unaffected by global energy supply disruptions, Energy independence is highly concerned with oil, the source of the countrys principal transport fuels. In total energy, the U. S. was over 61% self-sufficient in 2013, in May 2011, the country became a net exporter of refined petroleum products. As of 2014, the United States was the worlds third-largest producer of crude oil, and second largest exporter of refined products, after Russia. As of March 2015, 85% of crude oil came from, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela. 19% of imported oil comes from the Middle East, exports of crude oil have been illegal without a permit since the 1970s, in 2013, the United States physically exported a relatively small amount of oil, and only to Canada. Greater energy self-sufficiency, it was claimed, would prevent major supply disruptions like the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis from recurring. Proponents argue that the potential for political unrest in major oil suppliers, such as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Nigeria), is abundant, large individual pipelines and other fuel infrastructure and extraction projects are controversial issues in American politics. In the early 20th century the United States became a major oil supplier to the world, world War II prompted a Synthetic Liquid Fuels Program but it did not go beyond research. In mid-century the country shifted from being an exporter to a net importer. An import quota imposed in 1959 limited imports to a fraction of production until 1973. After the 1973 oil crisis, the United States Department of Energy, the U. S. s dependence on foreign oil rose from 26 percent to 47 percent between 1985 and 1989. According to the Washington & Jefferson College Energy Index, by 2012, the U. S. s imports of foreign oil fell to 36 percent in 2013, down from a high of 60 percent in 2006. Many proponents of energy independence look to the United States untapped domestic oil reserves, Foreign dependence is not the only factor in North American energy politics, however, environmental concerns around land and water pollution and greenhouse gases are also matters of controversy. Some proponents of U. S. energy independence promote wider use of such as ethanol fuel, methanol, biodiesel, plug-in hybrids. As of 2014, the United States imposes an import tariff of 54 cents a gallon on ethanol fuel, ethanol fuel in Brazil is produced from sugarcane, which yields much more fuel per acre than the corn used for ethanol production in the United States. In the United States, oil is consumed as fuel for cars, buses, trucks. Two-thirds of U. S. oil consumption is due to the transportation sector, a national strategy designed to shift all transportation to a combined use of alternative fuels and plug-in hybrids is predicted to make the U. S. independent of petroleum

20.
Renewable energy
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Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources, which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat. Renewable energy often provides energy in four important areas, electricity generation, air and water heating/cooling, transportation, based on REN21s 2016 report, renewables contributed 19. 2% to humans global energy consumption and 23. 7% to their generation of electricity in 2014 and 2015, respectively. This energy consumption is divided as 8. 9% coming from biomass,4. 2% as heat energy,3. 9% hydro electricity and 2. 2% is electricity from wind, solar, geothermal. Worldwide investments in renewable technologies amounted to more than US$286 billion in 2015, with countries like China, globally, there are an estimated 7.7 million jobs associated with the renewable energy industries, with solar photovoltaics being the largest renewable employer. As of 2015 worldwide, more than half of all new electricity capacity installed was renewable, Renewable energy resources exist over wide geographical areas, in contrast to other energy sources, which are concentrated in a limited number of countries. Rapid deployment of energy and energy efficiency is resulting in significant energy security, climate change mitigation. In international public opinion there is strong support for promoting renewable sources such as solar power. At the national level, at least 30 nations around the already have renewable energy contributing more than 20 percent of energy supply. National renewable energy markets are projected to continue to grow strongly in the coming decade, for example, in Denmark the government decided to switch the total energy supply to 100% renewable energy by 2050. While many renewable energy projects are large-scale, renewable technologies are also suited to rural and remote areas and developing countries, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said that renewable energy has the ability to lift the poorest nations to new levels of prosperity. Renewable energy systems are becoming more efficient and cheaper. Their share of energy consumption is increasing. Growth in consumption of coal and oil could end by 2020 due to increased uptake of renewables, in its various forms, it derives directly from the sun, or from heat generated deep within the earth. Included in the definition is electricity and heat generated from solar, wind, ocean, hydropower, biomass, geothermal resources, rapid deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency, and technological diversification of energy sources, would result in significant energy security and economic benefits. New government spending, regulation and policies helped the industry weather the financial crisis better than many other sectors. As of 2011, small solar PV systems provide electricity to a few million households, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said that renewable energy has the ability to lift the poorest nations to new levels of prosperity. At the national level, at least 30 nations around the already have renewable energy contributing more than 20% of energy supply. Some countries have much higher long-term policy targets of up to 100% renewables, outside Europe, a diverse group of 20 or more other countries target renewable energy shares in the 2020–2030 time frame that range from 10% to 50%

21.
Drinking water
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Drinking water, also known as potable water or improved drinking water, is water that is safe to drink or to use for food preparation, without risk of health problems. Globally, in 2015, 91% of people had access to suitable for drinking. Nearly 4.2 billion had access to tap water while another 2.4 billion had access to wells or public taps,1.8 billion people still use an unsafe drinking water source which may be contaminated by feces. This can result in infectious diarrhea such as cholera and typhoid among others, the amount of drinking water required is variable. It depends on activity, age, health issues. It is estimated that the average American drinks about one litre of water a day with 95% drinking less than three litres per day, for those working in a hot climate, up to 16 liters a day may be required. Water makes up about 60% of weight in men and 55% of weight in women, infants are about 70% to 80% water while the elderly are around 45%. Typically in developed countries, tap water meets drinking water quality standards, other typical uses include washing, toilets, and irrigation. Greywater may also be used for toilets or irrigation and its use for irrigation however may be associated with risks. Water may also be due to levels of toxins or suspended solids. Reduction of waterborne diseases and development of water resources is a major public health goal in developing countries. Bottled water is sold for consumption in most parts of the world. The word potable came into English from the Late Latin potabilis, the amount of drinking water required is variable. It depends on activity, age, health, and environmental conditions. It is estimated that the average American drinks about one litre of water a day with 95% drinking less than three litres per day, for those working in a hot climate, up to 16 litres per day may be required. Some health authorities have suggested that at least eight glasses of eight fl oz each are required by an adult per day, the British Dietetic Association recommends 1.8 litres. However, various reviews of the evidence performed in 2002 and 2008 could not find any scientific evidence recommending eight glasses of water per day. An individuals thirst provides a guide for how much water they require rather than a specific

22.
Rainforest
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The monsoon trough, alternatively known as the intertropical convergence zone, plays a significant role in creating the climatic conditions necessary for the Earths tropical rainforests. Around 40% to 75% of all species are indigenous to the rainforests. It has been estimated there may be many millions of species of plants, insects. Tropical rainforests have been called the jewels of the Earth and the worlds largest pharmacy, the undergrowth in some areas of a rainforest can be restricted by poor penetration of sunlight to ground level. If the leaf canopy is destroyed or thinned, the ground beneath is soon colonized by a dense, tangled growth of vines, shrubs and small trees, the term jungle is also sometimes applied to tropical rainforests generally. Tropical rainforests are characterized by a warm and wet climate with no dry season. Mean monthly temperatures exceed 18 °C during all months of the year, average annual rainfall is no less than 168 cm and can exceed 1,000 cm although it typically lies between 175 cm and 200 cm. Many of the tropical forests are associated with the location of the monsoon trough. The broader category of tropical moist forests are located in the zone between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. Tropical forests have been called the Earths lungs, although it is now known that rainforests contribute little net oxygen addition to the atmosphere through photosynthesis, Tropical forests cover a large part of the globe, but temperate rainforests only occur in few regions around the world. Temperate rainforests are rainforests in temperate regions and they occur in North America, in Europe, in East Asia, in South America and also in Australia and New Zealand. A tropical rainforest typically has a number of layers, each with different plants, examples include the emergent, canopy, understorey and forest floor layers. They need to be able to withstand the hot temperatures and strong winds that occur above the canopy in some areas, eagles, butterflies, bats and certain monkeys inhabit this layer. The canopy layer contains the majority of the largest trees, typically 30 metres to 45 metres tall, the densest areas of biodiversity are found in the forest canopy, a more or less continuous cover of foliage formed by adjacent treetops. The canopy, by some estimates, is home to 50 percent of all plant species, epiphytic plants attach to trunks and branches, and obtain water and minerals from rain and debris that collects on the supporting plants. The fauna is similar to found in the emergent layer. A quarter of all species are believed to exist in the rainforest canopy. Scientists have long suspected the richness of the canopy as a habitat, true exploration of this habitat only began in the 1980s, when scientists developed methods to reach the canopy, such as firing ropes into the trees using crossbows

23.
Biodiversity
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Biodiversity, a contraction of biological diversity, generally refers to the variety and variability of life on Earth. One of the most widely used definitions defines it in terms of the variability within species and it is a measure of the variety of organisms present in different ecosystems. This can refer to genetic variation, ecosystem variation, or species variation within an area, biome, terrestrial biodiversity tends to be greater near the equator, which seems to be the result of the warm climate and high primary productivity. Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth, and is richest in the tropics and these tropical forest ecosystems cover less than 10 per cent of earths surface, and contain about 90 percent of the worlds species. Marine biodiversity tends to be highest along coasts in the Western Pacific, there are latitudinal gradients in species diversity. Biodiversity generally tends to cluster in hotspots, and has been increasing through time, the number and variety of plants, animals and other organisms that exist is known as biodiversity. It is a component of nature and it ensures the survival of human species by providing food, fuel, shelter, medicines. The richness of biodiversity depends on the conditions and area of the region. All species of plants taken together are known as flora and about 300,000 species of plants are known to date, all species of animals taken together are known as fauna which includes birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, insects, crustaceans, molluscs, etc. Rapid environmental changes typically cause mass extinctions, more than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earths current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described. More recently, in May 2016, scientists reported that 1 trillion species are estimated to be on Earth currently with only one-thousandth of one percent described, the total amount of related DNA base pairs on Earth is estimated at 5.0 x 1037 and weighs 50 billion tonnes. In comparison, the mass of the biosphere has been estimated to be as much as 4 TtC. In July 2016, scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes from the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all living on Earth. The age of the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old, there are microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia. Other early physical evidence of a substance is graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old meta-sedimentary rocks discovered in Western Greenland. More recently, in 2015, remains of life were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. According to one of the researchers, If life arose relatively quickly on Earth, then it could be common in the universe

24.
Ocean
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An ocean is a body of saline water that composes much of a planets hydrosphere. On Earth, an ocean is one of the major divisions of the World Ocean. These are, in descending order by area, the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern, the word sea is often used interchangeably with ocean in American English but, strictly speaking, a sea is a body of saline water partly or fully enclosed by land. The ocean contains 97% of Earths water, and oceanographers have stated that less than 5% of the World Ocean has been explored, the total volume is approximately 1.35 billion cubic kilometers with an average depth of nearly 3,700 meters. As the world ocean is the component of Earths hydrosphere, it is integral to all known life, forms part of the carbon cycle. The world ocean is the habitat of 230,000 known species, but because much of it is unexplored, the origin of Earths oceans remains unknown, oceans are thought to have formed in the Hadean period and may have been the impetus for the emergence of life. Extraterrestrial oceans may be composed of water or other elements and compounds, the only confirmed large stable bodies of extraterrestrial surface liquids are the lakes of Titan, although there is evidence for the existence of oceans elsewhere in the Solar System. Early in their histories, Mars and Venus are theorized to have had large water oceans. The Mars ocean hypothesis suggests that nearly a third of the surface of Mars was once covered by water, compounds such as salts and ammonia dissolved in water lower its freezing point so that water might exist in large quantities in extraterrestrial environments as brine or convecting ice. Unconfirmed oceans are speculated beneath the surface of many planets and natural satellites, notably. The Solar Systems giant planets are thought to have liquid atmospheric layers of yet to be confirmed compositions. Oceans may also exist on exoplanets and exomoons, including surface oceans of water within a circumstellar habitable zone. Ocean planets are a type of planet with a surface completely covered with liquid. The concept of Ōkeanós has an Indo-European connection, Greek Ōkeanós has been compared to the Vedic epithet ā-śáyāna-, predicated of the dragon Vṛtra-, who captured the cows/rivers. Related to this notion, the Okeanos is represented with a dragon-tail on some early Greek vases, though generally described as several separate oceans, these waters comprise one global, interconnected body of salt water sometimes referred to as the World Ocean or global ocean. This concept of a body of water with relatively free interchange among its parts is of fundamental importance to oceanography. The major oceanic divisions – listed below in descending order of area and volume – are defined in part by the continents, various archipelagos, Oceans are fringed by smaller, adjoining bodies of water such as seas, gulfs, bays, bights, and straits. The Mid-Oceanic Ridge of the World are connected and form the Ocean Ridge, the continuous mountain range is 65,000 km long, and the total length of the oceanic ridge system is 80,000 km long

25.
Marine life
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Marine life, or sea life or ocean life, refers to the plants, animals and other organisms that live in the salt water of the sea or ocean, or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. At a fundamental level, marine life helps determine the nature of our planet. Marine organisms produce much of the oxygen we breathe, shorelines are in part shaped and protected by marine life, and some marine organisms even help create new land. Most life forms evolved initially in marine habitats, oceans provide about 99 percent of the living space on the planet. The earliest vertebrates appeared in the form of fish, which live exclusively in water, some of these evolved into amphibians which spend portions of their lives in water and portions on land. Other fish evolved into mammals and subsequently returned to the ocean as seals. Plant forms such as kelp and algae grow in the water and are the basis for some underwater ecosystems, plankton, and particularly phytoplankton, are key primary producers forming the general foundation of the ocean food chain. Marine vertebrates must obtain oxygen to survive, and they do so in various ways, fish have gills instead of lungs, although some species of fish, such as the lungfish, have both. Marine mammals, such as dolphins, whales, otters, some amphibians are able to absorb oxygen through their skin. Invertebrates exhibit a range of modifications to survive in poorly oxygenated waters including breathing tubes. However, as invertebrate life evolved in an aquatic habitat most have little or no specialisation for respiration in water. Altogether there are 230,000 documented marine species, including over 16,000 species of fish, there is no life without water, which has been characterised as the solvent of life. The Nobel prize winner Albert Szent-Györgyi referred to water as the mater und matrix, the abundance of water on earths surface is a unique feature that distinguishes earth from other planets in the Solar System. Earths hydrosphere consists chiefly of the oceans, but technically includes all surfaces in the world, including inland seas, lakes, rivers. The deepest underwater location is Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean with a depth of 10,911.4 m, the mass of the oceans is approximately 1. 35×1018 metric tons, or about 1/4400 of Earths total mass. The oceans cover an area of 3. 618×108 km2 with a depth of 3682 m. If all of Earths crustal surface was at the elevation as a smooth sphere. About 97. 5% of the water is saline, the remaining 2. 5% is fresh water, Most fresh water, about 68. 7%, is present as ice in ice caps and glaciers

26.
United States National Forest
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National Forest is a classification of protected and managed federal lands in the United States. The National Forest System was created by the Land Revision Act of 1891, abbot Kinney and forester Theodore Lukens were key spokesmen for the effort. In the United States there are 155 National Forests containing almost 190 million acres of land and these lands comprise 8.5 percent of the total land area of the United States, an area about the size of Texas. Some 87 percent of National Forest land lies west of the Mississippi River in the ranges of the Western United States. Alaska has 12 percent of all National Forest lands, the U. S. Forest Service also manages all of the United States National Grasslands, and around half of the United States National Recreation Areas. There are two different types of forests within the National Forest system. Those east of the Great Plains in the Midwestern and Eastern United States were primarily acquired by the government since 1891. The land had long been in the domain and sometimes repeatedly logged since colonial times. These are mostly lands that were kept in the domain, with the exception of inholdings. Land management of these areas focuses on conservation, timber harvesting, livestock grazing, watershed protection, wildlife, unlike national parks and other federal lands managed by the National Park Service, extraction of natural resources from national forests is permitted, and in many cases encouraged. National Forests are categorized by the U. S. as IUCN Category VI protected areas, however, the first-designated wilderness areas, and some of the largest, are on National Forest lands. There are management decision conflicts between conservationists and environmentalists, and natural resource extraction companies and lobbies, over the protection and/or use of National Forest lands, many ski resorts and summer resorts operate on leased land in National Forests

27.
National park
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A national park is a park in use for conservation purposes. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns, although individual nations designate their own national parks differently, there is a common idea, the conservation of wild nature for posterity and as a symbol of national pride. An international organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, although Yellowstone was not officially termed a national park in its establishing law, it was always termed such in practice and is widely held to be the first and oldest national park in the world. The first area to use national park in its legislation was the USs Mackinac Island. Australias Royal National Park, established in 1879, was the third official national park. In 1895 ownership of Mackinac Island was transferred to the State of Michigan as a state park, as a result, Australias Royal National Park is by some considerations the second oldest national park now in existence. The largest national park in the meeting the IUCN definition is the Northeast Greenland National Park. According to the IUCN,6,555 national parks worldwide met its criteria in 2006, IUCN is still discussing the parameters of defining a national park. National parks are almost always open to visitors, in 1971, these criteria were further expanded upon leading to more clear and defined benchmarks to evaluate a national park. In 1810, the English poet William Wordsworth described the Lake District as a sort of property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive. It was known as Hot Springs Reservation, but no authority was established. Federal control of the area was not clearly established until 1877, John Muir is today referred to as the Father of the National Parks due to his work in Yosemite. He published two articles in The Century Magazine, which formed the base for the subsequent legislation. President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act of Congress on July 1,1864, ceding the Yosemite Valley, according to this bill, private ownership of the land in this area was no longer possible. The state of California was designated to manage the park for use, resort. Leases were permitted for up to ten years and the proceeds were to be used for conservation, a public discussion followed this first legislation of its kind and there was a heated debate over whether the government had the right to create parks. The perceived mismanagement of Yosemite by the Californian state was the reason why Yellowstone at its establishment six years later was put under national control, in 1872, Yellowstone National Park was established as the United States first national park, being also the worlds first national park. In some European countries, however, national protection and nature reserves already existed, such as Drachenfels, Yellowstone was part of a federally governed territory

28.
Public land
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In all modern states, some land is held by central or local governments. The system of tenure of land, and the terminology used. The following examples illustrate some of the range, in several Commonwealth countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada, public lands are referred to as Crown lands. Recent proposals to sell Crown lands have been highly controversial, in France, may be held by communes, départements, or the central State. In Portugal the land owned by the State, by the two regions and by the local governments can be of two types, public domain and private domain. The latter is owned like any private entity, while public domain land cannot be sold, examples of public domain land are the margins of the sea and of the rivers, roads, streets, railways, ports, military areas, monuments. The States private domain is managed by Direção-Geral do Tesouro e Finanças, israel on the West Bank are based in the Ottoman Empire law specifying land not worked for over ten years becomes state lands. This became the base for deciding cases brought up by Arabs when certain Israeli settlements were created on presumed barren land. In the United States governmental entities including cities, counties, states, the majority of public lands in the United States are held in trust for the American people by the federal government and managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Each western state also received public land as trust lands designated for specific beneficiaries. Those trust lands cannot any longer be considered public lands as allowing any benefits to the public would be in breach of loyalty to the specific beneficiaries, the trust lands are usually managed extractively, to provide revenue for public schools. All states have some lands under state management, such as parks, state wildlife management areas. Wilderness is a designation for public lands which have been completely undeveloped. The concept of wilderness areas was legislatively defined by the 1964 Wilderness Act, Wilderness areas can be managed by any of the above Federal agencies, and some parks and refuges are almost entirely designated wilderness. A wilderness study area is a tract of land that has wilderness characteristics, and is managed as wilderness, typically each parcel is governed by its own set of laws and rules that explain the purpose for which the land was acquired, and how the land may be used. The concept of a designation and conservation of public lands dates back to our first National Parks. While designating the parks as public, the conservation was another matter, theodore Roosevelt and his conservation group, Boone and Crockett Club took matters into their own hands, by creating laws and regulations that protected these national treasures. Roosevelt and the Boone and Crockett Club continued on influencing the creation of scores of public lands including the National Refuge Systeml, USFS, most state- and federally managed public lands are open for recreational use

29.
Wood
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Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees, and other woody plants. It is a material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers which are strong in tension embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression. Wood is sometimes defined as only the secondary xylem in the stems of trees, in a living tree it performs a support function, enabling woody plants to grow large or to stand up by themselves. It also conveys water and nutrients between the leaves, other growing tissues, and the roots, Wood may also refer to other plant materials with comparable properties, and to material engineered from wood, or wood chips or fiber. In 2005, the stock of forests worldwide was about 434 billion cubic meters. As an abundant, carbon-neutral renewable resource, woody materials have been of intense interest as a source of renewable energy, in 1991 approximately 3.5 billion cubic meters of wood were harvested. Dominant uses were for furniture and building construction, a 2011 discovery in the Canadian province of New Brunswick discovered the earliest known plants to have grown wood, approximately 395 to 400 million years ago. Wood can be dated by carbon dating and in species by dendrochronology to make inferences about when a wooden object was created. People have used wood for millennia for many purposes, primarily as a fuel or as a material for making houses, tools, weapons, furniture, packaging, artworks. Constructions using wood date back ten thousand years, buildings like the European Neolithic long house were made primarily of wood. Recent use of wood has changed by the addition of steel. The year-to-year variation in tree-ring widths and isotopic abundances gives clues to the climate at that time. This process is known as growth, it is the result of cell division in the vascular cambium, a lateral meristem. These cells then go on to form thickened secondary cell walls, composed mainly of cellulose, hemicellulose, if the distinctiveness between seasons is annual, these growth rings are referred to as annual rings. Where there is little seasonal difference growth rings are likely to be indistinct or absent, if the bark of the tree has been removed in a particular area, the rings will likely be deformed as the plant overgrows the scar. It is usually lighter in color than that near the portion of the ring. The outer portion formed later in the season is known as the latewood or summerwood. However, there are differences, depending on the kind of wood

30.
Water quality
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Water quality refers to the chemical, physical, biological, and radiological characteristics of water. It is a measure of the condition of water relative to the requirements of one or more biotic species and it is most frequently used by reference to a set of standards against which compliance can be assessed. The most common used to assess water quality relate to health of ecosystems, safety of human contact. In the setting of standards, agencies make political and technical/scientific decisions about how the water will be used, in the case of natural water bodies, they also make some reasonable estimate of pristine conditions. Natural water bodies will vary in response to environmental conditions, Environmental scientists work to understand how these systems function, which in turn helps to identify the sources and fates of contaminants. Environmental lawyers and policymakers work to define legislation with the intention that water is maintained at a quality for its identified use. The vast majority of water on the Earth is neither potable nor toxic. This remains true when seawater in the oceans is not counted, another general perception of water quality is that of a simple property that tells whether water is polluted or not. In fact, water quality is a subject, in part because water is a complex medium intrinsically tied to the ecology of the Earth. Industrial and commercial activities are a cause of water pollution as are runoff from agricultural areas, urban runoff. The parameters for water quality are determined by the intended use, work in the area of water quality tends to be focused on water that is treated for human consumption, industrial use, or in the environment. Water quality depends on the geology and ecosystem, as well as human uses such as sewage dispersion, industrial pollution, use of water bodies as a heat sink. The United States Environmental Protection Agency limits the amounts of contaminants in tap water provided by US public water systems. The U. S. Food and Drug Administration regulations establish limits for contaminants in bottled water that must provide the protection for public health. Drinking water, including bottled water, may reasonably be expected to contain at least small amounts of some contaminants, the presence of these contaminants does not necessarily indicate that the water poses a health risk. Water drawn directly from a stream, lake, or aquifer, dissolved minerals may affect suitability of water for a range of industrial and domestic purposes. Hard water may be softened to remove these ions, the softening process often substitutes sodium cations. Hard water may be preferable to soft water for consumption, since health problems have been associated with excess sodium

31.
Wetland
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A wetland is a land area that is saturated with water, either permanently or seasonally, such that it takes on the characteristics of a distinct ecosystem. The primary factor that distinguishes wetlands from other forms or water bodies is the characteristic vegetation of aquatic plants. Wetlands play a number of roles in the environment, principally water purification, flood control, carbon sink, Wetlands are also considered the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems, serving as home to a wide range of plant and animal life. Wetlands occur naturally on every continent except Antarctica, the largest including the Amazon River basin, the West Siberian Plain, the water found in wetlands can be freshwater, brackish, or saltwater. The main wetland types include swamps, marshes, bogs, and fens, and sub-types include mangrove, carr, pocosin, the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment determined that environmental degradation is more prominent within wetland systems than any other ecosystem on Earth. International conservation efforts are being used in conjunction with the development of rapid assessment tools to people about wetland issues. Constructed wetlands can be used to treat municipal and industrial wastewater as well as stormwater runoff and they may also play a role in water-sensitive urban design. A patch of land that develops pools of water after a storm would not be considered a wetland. Wetlands have unique characteristics, they are distinguished from other water bodies or landforms based on their water level. Specifically, wetlands are characterized as having a table that stands at or near the land surface for a long enough period each year to support aquatic plants. A more concise definition is a community composed of hydric soil, Wetlands have also been described as ecotones, providing a transition between dry land and water bodies. In environmental decision-making, there are subsets of definitions that are agreed upon to make regulatory and policy decisions. A wetland is an ecosystem that arises when inundation by water produces soils dominated by anaerobic processes, There are four main kinds of wetlands – marsh, swamp, bog and fen. Some experts also recognize wet meadows and aquatic ecosystems as additional wetland types, the largest wetlands in the world include the swamp forests of the Amazon and the peatlands of Siberia. Under the Ramsar international wetland conservation treaty, wetlands are defined as follows, Article 2.1, may incorporate riparian and coastal zones adjacent to the wetlands, and islands or bodies of marine water deeper than six metres at low tide lying within the wetlands. Although the general definition given above applies around the world, each county, Wetlands generally include swamps, marshes, bogs and similar areas. This definition has been used in the enforcement of the Clean Water Act, some US states, such as Massachusetts and New York, have separate definitions that may differ from the federal governments. It is not uncommon for a wetland to be dry for long portions of the growing season, the most important factor producing wetlands is flooding

32.
Everglades
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The Everglades is a natural region of tropical wetlands in the southern portion of the U. S. state of Florida, comprising the southern half of a large drainage basin and part of the neotropic ecozone. The system begins near Orlando with the Kissimmee River, which discharges into the vast but shallow Lake Okeechobee. Water leaving the lake in the wet season forms a slow-moving river 60 miles wide, the Everglades experience a wide range of weather patterns, from frequent flooding in the wet season to drought in the dry season. Human habitation in the portion of the Florida peninsula dates to 15,000 years ago. Before European colonization, the region was dominated by the native Calusa, with Spanish colonization, both tribes declined gradually during the following two centuries. The Seminole formed from mostly Creek people who had been warring to the North, they assimilated other peoples and created a new culture. After being forced from northern Florida into the Everglades during the Seminole Wars of the early 19th century, migrants to the region who wanted to develop plantations first proposed draining the Everglades in 1848, but no work of this type was attempted until 1882. Canals were constructed throughout the first half of the 20th century, in 1947, Congress formed the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control Project, which built 1,400 miles of canals, levees, and water control devices. The Miami metropolitan area grew substantially at this time and Everglades water was diverted to cities, portions of the Everglades were transformed into farmland, where the primary crop was sugarcane. Approximately 50 percent of the original Everglades has been developed as agricultural or urban areas, following this period of rapid development and environmental degradation, the ecosystem began to receive notable attention from conservation groups in the 1970s. Internationally, UNESCO and the Ramsar Convention designated the Everglades a Wetland Area of Global Importance, the construction of a large airport 6 miles north of Everglades National Park was blocked when an environmental study found that it would severely damage the South Florida ecosystem. With heightened awareness and appreciation of the region, restoration began in the 1980s with the removal of a canal that had straightened the Kissimmee River, however, development and sustainability concerns have remained pertinent in the region. The deterioration of the Everglades, including water quality in Lake Okeechobee, was linked to the diminishing quality of life in South Floridas urban areas. In 2000 the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan was approved by Congress to combat these problems, to date, it is the most expensive and comprehensive environmental restoration attempt in history, but its implementation has faced political complications. The first written record of the Everglades was on Spanish maps made by cartographers who had not seen the land and they named the unknown area between the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of Florida Laguna del Espíritu Santo. The area was featured on maps for decades without having been explored, British surveyor John Gerard de Brahm, who mapped the coast of Florida in 1773, called the area River Glades. Both Marjory Stoneman Douglas and linguist Wallace McMullen suggest that cartographers substituted Ever for River, the name Everglades first appeared on a map in 1823, although it was also spelled as Ever Glades as late as 1851. The Seminole call it Pa-hay-okee, meaning Grassy Water, the region was labeled Pa-hai-okee on an American military map from 1839, although it had earlier been called Ever Glades throughout the Second Seminole War

33.
San Francisco Bay
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San Francisco Bay is a shallow estuary in the U. S. state of California. It is surrounded by a region known as the San Francisco Bay Area, dominated by the large cities San Francisco, Oakland. San Francisco Bay drains water from approximately 40 percent of California and it then connects to the Pacific Ocean via the Golden Gate strait. However, this group of interconnected bays is often called the San Francisco Bay. The bay was designated a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance on February 2,2013, the bay covers somewhere between 400 and 1,600 square miles, depending on which sub-bays, estuaries, wetlands, and so on are included in the measurement. The main part of the bay measures 3 to 12 miles wide east-to-west and it is the largest Pacific estuary in the Americas. Later, wetlands and inlets were filled in, reducing the Bays size since the mid-19th century by as much as one third. Recently, large areas of wetlands have been restored, further confusing the issue of the Bays size, despite its value as a waterway and harbor, many thousands of acres of marshy wetlands at the edges of the bay were, for many years, considered wasted space. As a result, soil excavated for building projects or dredged from channels was often dumped onto the wetlands, from the mid-19th century through the late 20th century, more than a third of the original bay was filled and often built on. The idea was, and remains, controversial, there are five large islands in San Francisco Bay. Alameda, the largest island, was created when a shipping lane was cut in 1901 and it is now predominantly a bedroom community. Angel Island was known as Ellis Island West because it served as the point for immigrants from East Asia. It is now a park accessible by ferry. Mountainous Yerba Buena Island is pierced by a tunnel linking the east and west spans of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, attached to the north is the artificial and flat Treasure Island, site of the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition. From the Second World War until the 1990s, both served as military bases and are now being redeveloped. Isolated in the center of the Bay is Alcatraz, the site of the federal penitentiary. The federal prison on Alcatraz Island no longer functions, but the complex is a popular tourist site, despite its name, Mare Island in the northern part of the bay is a peninsula rather than an island. During the last ice age, the now filled by the bay was a large linear valley with small hills

34.
San Joaquin River
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The San Joaquin River /ˈsæn wɑːˈkiːn/ is the longest river of Central California in the United States. An important source of water as well as a wildlife corridor. People have inhabited the San Joaquin Valley for more than 8,000 years, the newcomers quickly appropriated the rich natural and hydrologic resources of the watershed for use in farms and cities, but found themselves plagued by flood and drought. Because of the topography of the San Joaquin Valley, floods once transformed much of the lower river into a huge inland sea. In the 20th century, many levees and dams were built on the San Joaquin and these engineering works changed the fluctuating nature of the river forever, and cut off the Tulare Basin from the rest of the San Joaquin watershed. The river was called many different names, at different parts of the river were known by different names. The present name of the dates to 1805–1808, when Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga was surveying east from Mission San José in order to find possible sites for a mission. Moraga named a tributary of the river for Saint Joachim, husband of Saint Anne and father of Mary, the name Moraga chose was later applied to the entire river, it was in common use by 1810. In the Mono language, the river is called typici h huu, a member of the Pedro Fages party in 1772, Crespis vantage point was the hilltops behind modern San Francisco. Another early name was Rio San Juan Bautista, the origin of which is unknown.8 mi southeast of Mount Lyell, the Middle Fork is usually considered part of the main stem. The South Fork, which begins at Martha Lake in Kings Canyon National Park and flows through Florence Lake, from the mountainous alpine headwaters, the San Joaquin flows generally south into the foothills of the Sierra, passing through four hydroelectric dams. It eventually emerges from the foothills at what was once the town of Millerton, the location of Friant Dam since 1942, which forms Millerton Lake. Below Friant Dam, the San Joaquin flows west-southwest out into the San Joaquin Valley – the southern part of the Great Central Valley – passing north of Fresno, from Mendota, the San Joaquin swings northwest, passing through many different channels, some natural and some man-made. Northeast of Dos Palos, it is joined by the Fresno. Fifty miles downstream, the Merced River empties into an otherwise dry San Joaquin, the majority of the river flows through quiet agricultural bottomlands, and as a result its meandering course manages to avoid most of the urban areas and cities in the San Joaquin Valley. About 11 mi west of Modesto, the San Joaquin meets its largest tributary, near Vernalis, it is joined by another major tributary, the Stanislaus River. About 40 mi from the mouth, the river draws abreast to the flank of Stockton. From here to the mouth, the river is dredged as part of a navigation project, past the head of tide, amid the many islands of the delta, the San Joaquin is joined by two more tributaries, the Calaveras River and the larger Mokelumne

35.
Channel Islands (California)
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The Channel Islands of California are a chain of eight islands located in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern California along the Santa Barbara Channel in the United States of America. Five of the islands are part of Channel Islands National Park, the islands were first colonized by the Chumash and Tongva Native Americans 13,000 years ago, who were then displaced by European settlers who used the islands for fishing and agriculture. The U. S. military uses the islands as training grounds, weapons test sites, the Channel Islands and the surrounding waters house a diverse ecosystem with many endemic species and subspecies. Eight islands are split among the jurisdictions of three separate California counties, Santa Barbara County, Ventura County, and Los Angeles County, the islands are divided into two groups, the northern Channel Islands and the southern Channel Islands. The four northern Islands used to be a single known as Santa Rosae. The archipelago extends for 160 miles between San Miguel Island in the north and San Clemente Island in the south, together, the islands’ land area totals 221,331 acres, or about 346 square miles. Five of the islands were made into the Channel Islands National Park in 1980, the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary encompasses the waters six nautical miles off Anacapa, Santa Cruz, San Miguel, Santa Rosa, and Santa Barbara islands. Santa Catalina Island is the one of the eight islands with a significant permanent civilian settlement—the resort city of Avalon, California. Natural seepage of oil occurs at places in the Santa Barbara Channel. Tar balls or pieces of tar in small numbers are found in the kelp, Native Americans used naturally occurring tar, bitumen, for a variety of purposes which include roofing, waterproofing, paving and some ceremonial purposes. The Channel Islands at low elevations are virtually frost-free and constitute one of the few areas in the 48 contiguous US states. It snows only rarely, on mountain peaks. Separated from the California mainland throughout recent geological history, the Channel Islands provide the earliest evidence for seafaring in the Americas. It is also the site of the discovery of the earliest paleontological evidence of humans in North America, the northern Channel Islands are now known to have been settled by maritime Paleo Indian peoples at least 13,000 years ago. Archaeological sites on the island provide a unique and invaluable record of human interaction with Channel Island marine, historically, the northern islands were occupied by the island Chumash, while the southern islands were occupied by the Tongva. Author Scott ODell wrote about the peoples living on the island in his novel Island of the Blue Dolphins. Aleut hunters visited the islands to hunt otters in the early 1800s, the Aleuts purportedly clashed with the native Chumash, killing many over trading disputes. Aleut interactions with the natives were also detailed in ODells book, the Chumash and Tongva were removed from the islands in the early 19th century, taken to Spanish missions and pueblos on the adjacent mainland

36.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. is an American radio host, environmental activist, author and attorney specializing in environmental law. He is an Irish American, son of Robert Francis Bobby Kennedy, Kennedy is President of the Board of Waterkeeper Alliance, a non-profit focused on grass-roots efforts to protect and enhance waterways worldwide. He currently co-hosts Ring of Fire, a nationally syndicated American radio program, Kennedy has written three political books and two childrens books. Kennedy was born in Washington, D. C and he is the third of eleven children born to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and socialite Ethel Skakel Kennedy, and a nephew of World War II casualty Joseph Patrick Joe Kennedy Jr. President John Fitzgerald Jack Kennedy, and longtime Senator Edward Moore Ted Kennedy, Kennedy was 9 years old when his uncle John F. Kennedy was assassinated while serving as president. Kennedy remembered crying with his father upon seeing him after hearing of his uncles assassination and he had been informed by his mother of President Kennedys death. He was 14 years old when his father was assassinated while running for president in the 1968 election and he spoke and read excerpts from his fathers speeches at the Mass commemorating his death at Arlington National Cemetery. Following his fathers death, Kennedy had difficulty coping and got in trouble at home and with the law, getting arrested for loitering, at 15, Kennedy was expelled from Millbrook School in New York state because of his bad behavior and poor grades. He went on to earn a J. D. from the University of Virginia, in 1983, Kennedy was hired by New York County District Attorney and longtime family friend Robert M. Morgenthau to be an office assistant. In July 1983, after his attempt, Kennedy passed the bar examination in the State of New York. Less than a later he was disbarred and fired from the District Attorneys office for drug abuse. He was readmitted to the bar in 1985, in September 1983, Kennedy was charged with heroin possession in South Dakota when he became ill in the lavatory of an airplane that stopped in Rapid City, South Dakota. In February 1984, he pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing heroin. He was sentenced to community service after being sent to rehab, in 1984, Kennedy joined the Riverkeeper organization to satisfy the 1,500 hours community service to which he was sentenced. Riverkeeper was founded in 1966 by a group of fishermen and residents from New York with the goal of maintaining the purity of New York City drinking water, while there, Kennedy worked with the group to sue alleged polluters of the Hudson River. After his 1,500 hours were complete, the group hired Kennedy as its chief attorney, Robert Boyle, Riverkeepers founder and former president, fired Wegner but Kennedy re-hired him. Eight members of the Riverkeeper board, as well as Boyle, walked out of the meeting in protest of Kennedys actions. Kennedy also founded and is the current chairman of the umbrella organization Waterkeeper Alliance, today there are 191 waterkeeper programs worldwide operating under the trademarked Riverkeeper, Lakekeeper, Baykeeper, or Coastkeeper names

37.
Barack Obama
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Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He is the first African American to have served as president and he previously served in the U. S. Senate representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008, and in the Illinois State Senate from 1997 to 2004. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, two years after the territory was admitted to the Union as the 50th state and he grew up mostly in Hawaii, but also spent one year of his childhood in Washington State and four years in Indonesia. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, he worked as a community organizer in Chicago, in 1988 Obama enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation, he became a civil rights attorney and professor, Obama represented the 13th District for three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, when he ran for the U. S. Senate. In 2008, Obama was nominated for president, a year after his campaign began and he was elected over Republican John McCain, and was inaugurated on January 20,2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, during his first two years in office, Obama signed more landmark legislation than any Democratic president since LBJs Great Society. Main reforms were the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, after a lengthy debate over the national debt limit, Obama signed the Budget Control and the American Taxpayer Relief Acts. In foreign policy, Obama increased U. S. troop levels in Afghanistan, reduced nuclear weapons with the U. S. -Russian New START treaty, and ended military involvement in the Iraq War. He ordered military involvement in Libya in opposition to Muammar Gaddafi, after winning re-election over Mitt Romney, Obama was sworn in for a second term in 2013. Obama also advocated gun control in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and issued wide-ranging executive actions concerning climate change and immigration. In foreign policy, Obama ordered military intervention in Iraq in response to gains made by ISIL after the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, Obama left office in January 2017 with a 60% approval rating. He currently resides in Washington, D. C and his presidential library will be built in Chicago. Obama was born on August 4,1961, at Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu and he is the only President to have been born in Hawaii. He was born to a mother and a black father. His mother, Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas, of mostly English descent, with some German, Irish, Scottish, Swiss and his father, Barack Obama Sr. was a married Luo Kenyan man from Nyangoma Kogelo. Obamas parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the couple married in Wailuku, Hawaii on February 2,1961, six months before Obama was born. In late August 1961, Obamas mother moved him to the University of Washington in Seattle for a year

38.
Deepwater Horizon oil spill
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The Deepwater Horizon oil spill began on April 20,2010, in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect. The US Government estimated the total discharge at 4.9 million barrels, after several failed efforts to contain the flow, the well was declared sealed on September 19,2010. Reports in early 2012 indicated the site was still leaking. Due to the spill, along with adverse effects from the response and cleanup activities, extensive damage to marine and wildlife habitats and fishing. In Louisiana,4.9 million pounds of material was removed from the beaches in 2013. Oil cleanup crews worked four days a week on 55 miles of Louisiana shoreline throughout 2013. Oil continued to be found as far from the Macondo site as the waters off the Florida Panhandle and Tampa Bay, in 2013 it was reported that dolphins and other marine life continued to die in record numbers with infant dolphins dying at six times the normal rate. Numerous investigations explored the causes of the explosion and record-setting spill, notably, the U. S. governments September 2011 report pointed to defective cement on the well, faulting mostly BP, but also rig operator Transocean and contractor Halliburton. BP and the Department of Justice agreed to a record-setting $4.525 billion in fines, as of February 2013, criminal and civil settlements and payments to a trust fund had cost the company $42.2 billion. In September 2014, a U. S. District Court judge ruled that BP was primarily responsible for the oil spill because of its gross negligence and reckless conduct. In July 2015, BP agreed to pay $18.7 billion in fines, the Deepwater Horizon was a 10-year-old semi-submersible, mobile, floating, dynamically positioned drilling rig that could operate in waters up to 10,000 feet deep. Built by South Korean company Hyundai Heavy Industries and owned by Transocean, the rig operated under the Marshallese flag of convenience and it was drilling a deep exploratory well,18,360 feet below sea level, in approximately 5,100 feet of water. The well is situated in the Macondo Prospect in Mississippi Canyon Block 252 of the Gulf of Mexico, the Macondo well is located roughly 41 miles off the Louisiana coast. BP was the operator and principal developer of the Macondo Prospect with a 65% share, while 25% was owned by Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, and 10% by MOEX Offshore 2007, a unit of Mitsui. At the time,126 crew members were on board, seven BP employees,79 of Transocean, eleven missing workers were never found despite a three-day U. S. Coast Guard search operation and are believed to have died in the explosion. Ninety-four crew were rescued by lifeboat or helicopter,17 of whom were treated for injuries, the Deepwater Horizon sank on the morning of 22 April 2010. The oil leak was discovered on the afternoon of 22 April 2010 when an oil slick began to spread at the former rig site. The oil flowed for 87 days, BP originally estimated a flow rate of 1,000 to 5,000 barrels per day

39.
Global warming
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Global warming and climate change are terms for the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earths climate system and its related effects. Multiple lines of evidence show that the climate system is warming. The largest human influence has been emission of gases such as carbon dioxide, methane. These findings have been recognized by the science academies of the major industrialized nations and are not disputed by any scientific body of national or international standing. Future climate change and associated impacts will differ from region to region around the globe, anticipated effects include warming global temperature, rising sea levels, changing precipitation, and expansion of deserts in the subtropics. Warming is expected to be greater over land than over the oceans and greatest in the Arctic, with the retreat of glaciers, permafrost. Effects significant to humans include the threat to security from decreasing crop yields. Possible societal responses to global warming include mitigation by emissions reduction, adaptation to its effects, building systems resilient to its effects, most countries are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, whose ultimate objective is to prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change. Public reactions to global warming and concern about its effects are also increasing, a global 2015 Pew Research Center report showed a median of 54% consider it a very serious problem. There are significant regional differences, with Americans and Chinese among the least concerned, the global average surface temperature shows a warming of 0.85 °C in the period 1880 to 2012, based on multiple independently produced datasets. Earths average surface temperature rose by 0. 74±0.18 °C over the period 1906–2005, the rate of warming almost doubled for the last half of that period. The rest has melted ice and warmed the continents and atmosphere, the average temperature of the lower troposphere has increased between 0.12 and 0.135 °C per decade since 1979, according to satellite temperature measurements. The warming that is evident in the temperature record is consistent with a wide range of observations. The probability that these changes could have occurred by chance is virtually zero, temperature changes vary over the globe. Since 1979, land temperatures have increased about twice as fast as ocean temperatures, ocean temperatures increase more slowly than land temperatures because of the larger effective heat capacity of the oceans and because the ocean loses more heat by evaporation. Since the beginning of industrialisation the temperature difference between the hemispheres has increased due to melting of sea ice and snow in the North. Average arctic temperatures have been increasing at almost twice the rate of the rest of the world in the past 100 years, the thermal inertia of the oceans and slow responses of other indirect effects mean that climate can take centuries or longer to adjust to changes in forcing. Some of this warming will be driven by past natural forcings which are still seeking equilibrium in the climate system

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Endangered species
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An endangered species is a species which has been categorized as likely to become extinct. In 2012, the IUCN Red List featured 3079 animal and 2655 plant species as endangered worldwide, the figures for 1998 were, respectively,1102 and 1197. Many nations have laws that protect conservation-reliant species, for example, population numbers, trends and species conservation status can be found in the lists of organisms by population. The conservation status of a species indicates the likelihood that it will become extinct, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the best-known worldwide conservation status listing and ranking system. Over 40% of the species are estimated to be at risk of extinction. Internationally,199 countries have signed an accord to create Biodiversity Action Plans that will protect endangered, in the United States, such plans are usually called Species Recovery Plans. Those species of Near Threatened and Least Concern status have been assessed and found to have relatively robust and healthy populations, though these may be in decline. The IUCN categories, with examples of animals classified by them, include, Extinct Extinct in the wild Captive individuals survive, critically endangered Faces an extremely high risk of extinction in the immediate future. Endangered Faces a high risk of extinction in the near future, vulnerable Faces a high risk of endangerment in the medium term. Near-threatened May be considered threatened in the near future, Least concern No immediate threat to species survival. A population size reduction of ≥ 50%, projected or suspected to be met within the next 10 years or three generations, whichever is the longer, based on any of to under A1. E) Quantitative analysis showing the probability of extinction in the wild is at least 20% within 20 years or five generations, there is data from the United States that shows a correlation between human populations and threatened and endangered species. Under the Endangered Species Act in the United States, species may be listed as endangered or threatened, the Salt Creek tiger beetle is an example of an endangered subspecies protected under the ESA. Some endangered species laws are controversial, also lobbying from hunters and various industries like the petroleum industry, construction industry, and logging, has been an obstacle in establishing endangered species laws. The Bush administration lifted a policy that required federal officials to consult an expert before taking actions that could damage endangered species. Under the Obama administration, this policy has been reinstated, being listed as an endangered species can have negative effect since it could make a species more desirable for collectors and poachers. This effect is potentially reducible, such as in China where commercially farmed turtles may be reducing some of the pressure to poach endangered species. Another problem with the species is its effect of inciting the use of the shoot, shovel

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Pollution
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Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants. Pollution is often classed as point source or nonpoint source pollution, Air pollution has always accompanied civilizations. Pollution started from prehistoric times when man created the first fires, metal forging appears to be a key turning point in the creation of significant air pollution levels outside the home. The burning of coal and wood, and the presence of horses in concentrated areas made the cities the cesspools of pollution. The Industrial Revolution brought an infusion of untreated chemicals and wastes into local streams that served as the water supply, king Edward I of England banned the burning of sea-coal by proclamation in London in 1272, after its smoke became a problem. But the fuel was so common in England that this earliest of names for it was acquired because it could be carted away from some shores by the wheelbarrow and it was the industrial revolution that gave birth to environmental pollution as we know it today. London also recorded one of the extreme cases of water quality problems with the Great Stink on the Thames of 1858. Pollution issues escalated as population growth far exceeded view ability of neighborhoods to handle their waste problem, reformers began to demand sewer systems, and clean water. In 1870, the conditions in Berlin were among the worst in Europe. There were no toilets in the streets or squares. Visitors, especially women, often became desperate when nature called, in the public buildings the sanitary facilities were unbelievably primitive. As a metropolis, Berlin did not emerge from a state of barbarism into civilization until after 1870. Chicago and Cincinnati were the first two American cities to enact laws ensuring cleaner air in 1881, as historian Martin Melosi notes, The generation that first saw automobiles replacing the horses saw cars as miracles of cleanliness. By the 1940s, however, automobile-caused smog was an issue in Los Angeles. Other cities followed around the country early in the 20th century. Extreme smog events were experienced by the cities of Los Angeles and Donora, Pennsylvania in the late 1940s, Air pollution would continue to be a problem in England, especially later during the industrial revolution, and extending into the recent past with the Great Smog of 1952. Awareness of atmospheric pollution spread widely after World War II, with fears triggered by reports of fallout from atomic warfare. Then a non-nuclear event, The Great Smog of 1952 in London and this prompted some of the first major modern environmental legislation, The Clean Air Act of 1956

Biodiversity, a portmanteau of "bio" (life) and "diversity", generally refers to the variety and variability of life on …

A sampling of fungi collected during summer 2008 in Northern Saskatchewan mixed woods, near LaRonge is an example regarding the species diversity of fungi. In this photo, there are also leaf lichens and mosses.

Killer whales (orca) are marine apex predators. They hunt practically anything, including tuna, smaller sharks and seals. However, the oceans are alive with less obvious, but equally important forms of marine life, such as bacteria.

Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an …

Diagram of secondary growth in a tree showing idealized vertical and horizontal sections. A new layer of wood is added in each growing season, thickening the stem, existing branches and roots, to form a growth ring.

Satirical cartoon by William Heath, showing a woman observing monsters in a drop of London water (at the time of the Commission on the London Water Supply report, 1828)

An automated sampling station installed along the East Branch Milwaukee River, New Fane, Wisconsin. The cover of the 24-bottle autosampler (center) is partially raised, showing the sample bottles inside. The autosampler was programmed to collect samples at time intervals, or proportionate to flow over a specified period. The data logger (white cabinet) recorded temperature, specific conductance, and dissolved oxygen levels.

Filtering a manually collected water sample (grab sample) for analysis

Global warming, also referred to as climate change, is the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of …

Ship tracks can be seen as lines in these clouds over the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of the United States. Atmospheric particles from these and other sources could have a large effect on climate through the aerosol indirect effect.

Eggs in different stages of development: In some, only a few cells grow on top of the yolk, in the lower right, the blood vessels surround the yolk, and in the upper left, the black eyes are visible, even the little lens.